School Assemblies are Great!
My morning ride sharing partner is on a visa run in Laos for the next three days. I therefore had to resort back to riding a motor scooter to school. This resulted in the usual neck kink from stress, fear, and a general sense of foreboding as all I could imagine was falling off the motor scooter and skidding like a ping pong ball along the Thai freeway. Fortunately, everything went well and I paid the driver his 100Baht when we arrived at school.
I made my way to the fourth floor foreign language office and was notified that morning classes had been cancelled in lieu of a school assembly! I remember Xplore Asia advised our group that this might happen and now I can say that I actually experienced it. The entire morning consisted of watching the students perform traditional Thai dances, singing, speeches, skits, and there were colorful booths that served homemade Thai dishes. I tried Thai green Boba tea, coconut jelly something, fried pork balls, fried fish balls, some type of candied creamed banana wrapped in banana leaves, and a firm sweetened condensed milk coconut concoction.
During the classes I did teach, I shared with them pictures of my family and home and they absolutely came alive. I was surprised at their curiosity and ability to communicate fluently in English. On a whim, I asked one of my M-2 students if he could translate my first name (Giuseppe) into Thai. This is what he came up with.
Not that I don’t trust an 8th grader, but I asked several other students in multiple classes and they confirmed this says, “Giuseppe”.
After my last class, the head English teacher advised that I had to prepare my students for midterms which run from July 18thto the 23rd. When midterms start, the Thai teachers act as proctors and the English teachers sit in the office during the testing period. At the culmination of the midterm exams, we are provided with the tests and expected to grade them.